mals experience it. But with most of us convention and
civilization and education have blinded and deafened and obscured the
natural reason. No, sometimes we may recognize evil by its hatred of the
good--one doesn't need much penetration to guess at the influence which
dictated, quite unconsciously, the "Blackwood" review of Keats--but this
is purely incidental; and, as a rule, I suspect that the Hierarchs of
Tophet pass quite unnoticed, or, perhaps, in certain cases, as good but
mistaken men.'

'But you used the word "unconscious" just now, of Keats' reviewers. Is
wickedness ever unconscious?'

'Always. It must be so. It is like holiness and genius in this as in
other points; it is a certain rapture or ecstasy of the soul; a
transcendent effort to surpass the ordinary bounds. So, surpassing
these, it surpasses also the understanding, the faculty that takes note
of that which comes before it. No, a man may be infinitely and horribly
wicked and never suspect it. But I tell you, evil in this, its certain
and true sense, is rare, and I think it is growing rarer.'

'I am trying to get hold of it all,' said Cotgrave. 'From what you say,
I gather that the true evil differs generically from that which we call
evil?'

'Quite so. There is, no doubt, an analogy between the two; a resemblance
such as enables us to use, quite legitimately, such terms as the "foot
of the mountain" and the "leg of the table." And, sometimes, of course,
the two speak, as it were, in the same language. The rough miner, or
"puddler," the untrained, undeveloped "tiger-man," heated by a quart or
two above his usual measure, comes home and kicks his irritating and
injudicious wife to death. He is a murderer. And Gilles de Raiz was a
murderer. But you see the gulf that separates the two? The "word," if I
may so speak, is accidentally the same in each case, but the "meaning"
is utterly different. It is flagrant "Hobson Jobson" to confuse the two,
or rather, it is as if one supposed that Juggernaut and the Argonauts
had something to do etymologically with one another. And no doubt the
same weak likeness, or analogy, runs between all the "social" sins and
the real spiritual sins, and in some cases, perhaps, the lesser may be
"schoolmasters" to lead one on to the greater--from the shadow to the
reality. If you are anything of a Theologian, you will see the
importance of all this.'

'I am sorry to say,' remarked Cotgrave, 'that I have devoted very little
o